Abstract
This article aims to present a bibliometric analysis of Smart Cities. The study analyzes the most important journals during the period between 1991 and 2019. It provides helpful insights into the document types, the distribution of countries/territories, the distribution of institutions, the authors’ geographical distribution, the most active authors and their research interests or fields, the relationships between principal authors and more relevant publications, and the most cited articles. This paper also provides important information about the core and historical references and the most cited papers. The analysis used the keywords and thematic noun-phrases in the titles and abstracts of the sample papers to explore the hot research topics in the top journals (e.g., ‘Smart Cities’, ‘Intelligent Cities’, ‘Sustainable Cities’, ‘e-Government’, ‘Digital Transformation’, ‘Knowledge-Based City’, etc.). The main objective is to have a quantitative description of the published literature about Smart Cities; this description will be the basis for the development of a methodology for the diagnosis of the maturity of a Smart City. The results presented here help to define the scientific concept of Smart Cities and to measure the importance that the term has gained through the years. The study has allowed us to know the main indicators of the published literature in depth, from the date of publication of the first articles and the evolution of these indicators to the present day. From the main indicators in the literature, some were selected to be applied: The most influential journals on Smart Cities according to the general citation structure in Smart Cities, Global Impact Factor of Smart Cities, number of publications, publications on Smart Cities around the world, and their correlation.
Highlights
This article presents an exhaustive review of the bibliography of Smart Cities with worldwide scope and over all time
The analysis shows that Smart City research is a theme where many areas of research converge
The bibliometric analysis indicates that Smart Cities are emerging as a fast-growing topic of scientific inquiry, and much of the knowledge generated about them is singularly technological
Summary
This article presents an exhaustive review of the bibliography of Smart Cities with worldwide scope and over all time. The concept of the Smart City was used tacitly before being recognized as a term by the disciplines, institutions, and entities that work in the creation, study, and improvement of cities. A bibliometric study offers a statistical description of scientific production. It tries to extract as much information as possible from the studied data set to offer researchers a complete and organized vision of the multidisciplinary scientific production of the subject matter studied. The Smart City concept encompasses various areas of knowledge, that is, the Smart City is the result of the evolution and adaptation of technologies and knowledge of the sciences, as well as the strengthening and improvement of raw materials, and the needs and challenges that society has imposed, such as security and efficient use of time and resources
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